TI OPENS INFORMATION APPLIANCE DESIGN CENTER IN TAIWAN.

With a mission to provide the best in class application support for leading original equipment manufacturers, Texas Instruments Incorporated (NYSE: TXN) (TI) Asia today announced the opening of the Information Appliance (IA) Design Center in Taiwan. The center will help pioneer the development of IA and wireless digital products, based on TI programmable digital signal processing (DSP) technologies. This includes TI's DSP-based OMAP architecture, an open and programmable platform enabling the next generation of mobile Internet access devices to run real-time wireless applications such as video conferencing, streaming video, Internet audio, mobile commerce, location-based services and more.

The opening ceremony was officiated by Dr. Yuan-Shian Shu, Director General of Taiwan's Industrial Development Bureau (IDB), Matthew Miao, Chairman of IA Alliance, Homing Huang, Chairman of the Institute for Information Industry (III), and Terry Cheng, President of TI Asia.

The establishment of the IA Design Center demonstrates TI's continuous investment in strengthening application engineering support for local OEMs. The company signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) last August with the IDB for collaboration on promoting TI's DSP technology among Taiwan's electronics manufacturers.

"I am very excited to see increasing collaboration among TI and the local electronics industry. Many of us believe the IA market will be big. Few of us can predict exactly where it will go and what applications will be most important to consumers. We have seen emerging new products such as Internet audio, digital still cameras, smartphones and wireless Internet access devices. Winning in these new markets requires not only the right technologies but also the human ability to dream and innovate," said Dr. Yuan-Shian Shu, Director General of the IDB.

"What is common among these so-called 'information appliances' is that they require high digital signal processing performance and highly efficient energy consumption and low power to extend battery life. Being the world leader in DSP, we believe that TI can offer the best platform for designers to innovate future digital devices," said Terry Cheng, TI Asia president. "TI's OMAP wireless architecture seamlessly combines software and a dual-core hardware architecture comprising TI's programmable DSP and a RISC processor. The new center will play an important role in helping OEM customers design IA and wireless products based on the OMAP wireless architecture."

Already, TI's OMAP wireless architecture is fast becoming the de facto standard, as leading manufacturers including Nokia, Ericsson, Sony, Handspring and Sendo have endorsed solutions using the OMAP architecture for next-generation, wireless handsets and mobile Internet devices. Symbian's EPOC operating system, Microsoft Window's CE operating system, and Sun Microsystems' Java 2 Micro Edition platform are supported by the OMAP architecture.

Texas Instruments Incorporated is the world leader in digital signal processing and analog technologies, the semiconductor engines of the Internet age. The company's businesses also include sensors and controls, and educational and productivity solutions. TI is headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and has manufacturing or sales operations in more than 25 countries.